Dear Friends,
I would like to update you on a number of exciting new developments from Edelman.

In a snapshot;

• We are going to Africa
• We won another award
• We have got some fantastic new leaders and talent in the region
• And, I am saying goodbye

Firstly, I would like to thank you all for your continued partnership and support over the last 4 years. We will celebrate our 5 year anniversary in the UAE this October, and look forward to inviting you all to help us celebrate this achievement.

This Week

We are extremely pleased to announce that we have now opened Edelman South Africa. We recently acquired Bairds Renaissance, our South African affiliate for 20 years. This is an important milestone and marks our first office on the African continent. We are also pleased to announce the appointment of Tod Donhauser, currently EVP and head of the technology policy group in Washington, D.C. as Managing Director of Edelman South Africa. He will be relocating shortly to Johannesburg and will report to Robert Holdheim, CEO of Edelman South Asia, Middle East and Africa.

Over the past year an increasing number of clients have approached us about our capabilities on the African continent. Business globally recognizes the opportunities presented across the board, from infrastructure projects to an emerging consumer population. Edelman is now positioned to both support our clients as well as participate in the growth of this important region.

Our own office builds on our existing network of 24 affiliates and partners across the Middle East and Africa, enabling us to provide services to our clients in most parts of the region.

Later this month

We will be attending the Sabre Awards ceremony in Barcelona. We have been awarded the Middle East consultancy of the year. On behalf of the team, we would like to thank you all for helping us achieve this. Our trophy cabinet is looking okay at the moment, and this award will sit nicely alongside our Middle East PR Association Agency of the Year Awards in 2012 and 2011.

As of May 1

Jane Fields has joined as General Manager, Edelman UAE. As a corporate communications professional, Jane has over 18 years of experience across multiple sectors including Financial Services, Corporate, B2B Media, New Media and Technology.

After five years of leading and building her first start-up, Jane moved into the world of Media and Technology. She first joined the board at United Business Media (CMPi) leading the people agenda followed by Skype Technologies. In 2011 Jane co-founded her second start-up Oxbow Media specializing in delivering multimedia communications strategies, including digital, online media and large-scale events. She has also worked for Ernst and Young in a senior consultancy role.

Jane can be contacted at jane.fields@edelman.com and on +971 50 811 3669

From July 1

Edelman will be reorganising our global structure and Middle East and Africa will move under the leadership of David Brain into a new region called Asia Pacific Middle East and Africa (APACMEA). Increasingly our clients are structuring themselves against growth opportunities prompted by ever increasing trade flows between Africa, the Middle East and Asia. We are looking to capitalize on this trend by organizing ourselves in a similar fashion. Our clients are demanding both excellence in market understanding and execution as well as deep industry and specialist knowledge. The Middle East and Africa will join South Asia and become a sub region known as South Asia, Middle East and Africa (SAMEA).

This region will be led by Rob Holdheim, CEO, SAMEA. Rob is currently Managing Director of our Indian business, and has been with Edelman in four markets on three continents over ten years. Rob studied Middle Eastern politics and economics, including Arabic language, in graduate school.

Rob can be contacted at robert.holdheim@edelman.com and on +91 9717100588

The SAMEA region now includes 14 Edelman offices with close to 400 staff, as well as 33 affiliates and partners. We are able to provide support in the areas of content development and dissemination, media relations, public affairs, digital communications, employee engagement, crisis and issues management, corporate social responsibility, research, experiential marketing and integrated brand engagement.

From May 16

I will be saying goodbye to the Middle East and Africa. After 8 years living in Oman and Syria as a child, and 7 years working across the Middle East and Africa it is time to move on. I will be taking up a new role as CEO of Edelman South East Asia and Australasia from July 1. I will continue to work on a number of projects and given trade flows and client needs, I hope that we will be able to help you in the region.

Edelman has offices in Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia, and a network of partners and affiliates across the wider region.

I would like to thank you all for all of your support, partnership and friendship over these last few years. It has been a true honor to have worked with you, and learn so much. Please don’t hesitate to drop me a line when you are travelling through the region.

My email (iain.twine@edelman.com) will remain the same, and until July 1 I can be contacted on +971 50 1095 770.

I wish you and your families a prosperous, happy and healthy future, and please stay in contact.

Kind Regards

Iain

Facebook facelift

People get surgery for all different reasons; some because they genuinely don’t like the way a certain feature looks, some because of old age and, some…… for the perfect profile picture on Facebook

According to an article on Khaleej times, people are going under the knife to look picture perfect for Facebook. This may sound like an extreme decision for a minority group but, according to surgeons the “trend” commonly known as ‘the Facebook facelift’ is growing and is especially popular amongst school and college students of both genders in India.

The Facebook facelift has included several types of surgery including nose, chemical peeling, and body contouring, just to mention a few. In one particular case a girl underwent surgery to reshape her chin all simply for more likes and comments which have ultimately given her a confidence boost.

Looking good on Facebook is said to be the in thing. The perfect profile picture opens the gate way to many opportunities including marriage proposals, so by any means necessary these youngsters will get that perfect picture…

Read more here.

#ShkMohdJournal

Sheik Mohammed has given his followers on twitter the opportunity to get an insight into his life and experience as a leader. Sheik Mohammed has created the hash tag @ShkMohdJournal and has been tweeting away valuable advice and life lessons. Some of the tweets really do reflect on the great work he has done in making Dubai the place it is today.

“- A true leader turns a dream or an idea into reality & a visualization into implementation.History has no place for dreamers.”

Read more here.

Gig It

Music and gamers are going to love this one! Gig It, the new social game coming to Facebook allows fans to interact on a new platform by putting their own unique input into creating 3D concerts. Players will be able to sit in the directors seat and create and customise everything, from music, wardrobe, venue and even sponsors. Once created, there will be an option to show off your great work and creative imaginations by sharing the show with your friends on Facebook – pretty cool if you ask me.

Gig It is an innovative means to social interactions and allows artists to give its fan base the opportunity to connect beyond listening to the music.

Read more here.

Digital Detox

Gone are the days when your friends would actually knock on the door for you to come out, or the days when you would set a time and place to meet someone and just pray that they show up on time . Growing up I didn’t have the luxury of a smartphone, if you took my phone away from me now, I would begin to get major withdrawals symptoms after an hour of not checking my messages, Twitter, Instagram, Keek etc etc. I honestly have no idea how I managed to keep in touch with people and the world before my smart phone.

The digital detox camp is a great way to put us to the ultimate test of self-control and to remind us what life what like before the smartphone and digital craze. The 4 day, 1970’s style camp will be held this summer in the states, with three major unbreakable rules; no technology, no mobilephones and no talking about work. Think you can do it?

Read more here.

By Wahiba Al Barwani

Where on earth have these two months gone?! I guess time really does fly when you’re having fun. Often graduates snarl at the idea of being qualified and employed as an Intern. At a glance, this statement is understandable, but what most graduates like myself, fail to realise until completing an efficient internship is the importance and value internships have on our CV’s.

My time with Edelman has truly been an exciting and intense learning curve. When I first joined, I sat at my desk observing how each member of the team conducted their work and corporate conversations with such confidence and I thought to myself, I will NEVER be able to do that! Instead, I sat staring at my phone when tasked with media calls hoping it would magically disappear into my desk.

Literally within the second day I was briefed on work, and I don’t mean printing and photocopying duties, I mean REAL PR work. By the end of my first week I quickly realised the connotations that surrounded intern duties certainly does not apply to this company.

What I loved most about interning for Edelman was that each member of the team made me feel at home like a permanent employee. I felt a sense of belonging, and I was never left alone to sit twiddling my thumbs. I was allocated a line manager at the beginning of the programme who stayed devoted to my progress and helped me to arrange my work load throughout my time, which made my experience a lot less intimidating as I knew I always had someone to turn to.

Throughout these two months at Edelman I got to dabble in a wide range of accounts and PR duties which meant being thrown into the deep end – but I have no complaints because two months later, I feel like I have gained valuable experience, knowledge and confidence.  I’m pretty sure I can compile a coverage report with my eyes closed now.

I learnt a lot about the PR industry and related industries such as digital and events management which is a massive bonus. Although, I still have room for plenty of growth, my Edelman experience has provided a solid foundation and I can now officially pick up the phone and pitch to a journalist.

Associated Press hacked

On Tuesday the official website of the Associated Press was overtaken by the Syrian Electronic Army, shocking the cyberspace. The first tweet sent by the hackers was “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured”.  Within a few hours of this tweet, the AP sent out a message from its Facebook account, informing users; “Please do not respond to news posted there in the last 20 minutes.” The account in the meantime had been suspended by Twitter.

Tell-tale signs that the Tweet was a hoax included; the language of the tweet, which was out of the company’s signature AP style;  the word “breaking” was not capitalized; AP typically refers to Obama with the term “President” before his name; the tweet came directly from the web, and the company usually uses the tool Social Flow to send tweets.

Had the Tweet been real, this is what it would have likely looked like:

Image source: Mashable

AP is not the only major organization that has had a security breach, in 2011 organizations such as the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and Sony became part of the list as well.

Read more about the story here.

Arguing Emirati’s goes viral  

First up, we have a clever little video from Etisalat. We all know how infuriating it is when people start talking during a movie! But what makes this video funny is the fact that from the outset, the viewer is made aware that it is a stunt with an actor and hidden cameras. As the movie starts, the actor obnoxiously answers his mobile, visibly bothering those around him. As his conversation gets louder, an Emirati man steps in and asks him to hang up the phone or leave. As the dispute becomes more animated, the actor stands and pauses the movie, saying “You’ll not miss anything, here you go, pause. No need to get upset – I’ll play it back for you.”

With over 250,000 views in its first week, this video proves that simple is effective. Read more here.

Churnalism

Every day we are exposed to oodles of information and content on the web, and by the end of the day our brains are overloaded with things that aren’t necessarily essential. Ever wondered how much of that information is actually trustworthy? Even credible publications and professional journalists sometimes regurgitate information without giving it a careful vetting, a process often referred to as “Churnalism”.

The Sunlight Foundation has unveiled a tool that will help overcome this. How does it work?

Developed to be an open-source plagiarism detection engine. ‘It will scan any text (a news article, e.g.) and compare it with a corpus of press releases and Wikipedia entries. If it finds similar language, you’ll get a notification of a detected “churn,” and you’ll be able to take a look at the two sources side by side.’

Churnalism will be available both on the website and as a browser extension.

Read more about the story here.

Baby & Me campaign

Evian are rediscovering their “inner baby”. Using the ‘Live Young’ concept from previous campaigns such as ‘Rollerbabies” and “Baby Inside”, the water brand from Danone has returned with this feel-good video showing a group of adults seeing baby versions of themselves in a shop window, then successively dancing with them. The result?  Well, see this super-cute cut for yourself.

As I sit in the trenches of yet another on-site media centre, surrounded by towers of press packs, media schedules and clippings, amid discarded coffee cups and granola bars I take a moment to reflect on the mechanics of Festival living – the craziness of 16 hour days, the adrenalin highs and lows of running a red carpet, the unpredictability of media management and the desperation involved in artist liaison management.

In my 3 years with Edelman I have managed the P&P (press & publicity) office for 6 Festivals, 3 of which have been in the past 5 months. I can truly say that Festival PR takes on a world of its own  – when you are running multiple press junkets, a press conference, a photo call and a red carpet in a single day structure is key but, and more importantly, flexibility is even more crucial. Murphy’s Law has a funny way of rearing its head at the worst possible time and adaptability to these scenarios is what your team is truly measured on.

It sounds clichéd but a cohesive team is vital for success. There is nothing that breaks down hierarchical barriers more than a succession of 16 hour days and the emotional highs and lows of an unpredictable day on-site. The true meaning of team spirit shines through – everyone has each other’s back, spurs each other on and is genuinely concerned for each other’s well-being, and sanity!

My advice – if you ever get the opportunity to work on a Festival, take it. It will be long hours and stressful situations but the best hand-on learning experience you can ever get; from reactive media engagement, FAM trip facilitation and artist management liaison to managing press junkets, running red carpets and handling opening ceremonies – an incredible learning environment.

Once the curtain falls and the exhaustion passes you won’t be able to wait for your next Festival experience and if you don’t believe me just take a look at our fantastic on-site video from Dubai International Film Festival…

Film Festival

Dubai International Film Festival 2012 – Behind The Scenes from Edelman Middle East on Vimeo.

Hi all, I am Wahiba the other intern at Edelman Dubai. I enjoy writing and I am a big fan of blogging so I was thrilled to give this a shot. The topics I touched on for this week’s edition of TWTW are the following; twitter resumes, Youtubes celebration of video, the fusion of Shazam and fashion and lastly, Facebook video ads. Hope you enjoy it!

#twusume – Twitter resume!?

Having trouble finding a job, internship or any career opportunity? According to an article on psfk, companies are using the hashtag #twusume, also known as ‘twitter resume’, to head hunt and interact more directly with potential candidates.

Incorporating #twesume is still a relatively new approach of identifying future employees, however, one worth looking into, especially as social media is at the forefront of many activities in the world of PR. Funny, I write about this, since this approach has been successful for me in the past and landed me my first ever PR internship simply by tweeting “Looking for a PR intern opportunity in Dubai #PRdubai”.

Image source: PSFK

YouTube celebrate VCR

Youtube have gone ‘old school’ by treating its viewer’s eyes with a reminder of how far digital and video technology has progressed. This quirky feature option is Youtube’s way of celebrating 57 years of VCR – a  fantastic way to involve viewers in visualising and appreciating the triumph of digital video over time.

The “tape mode” button which appears on the side of the page engages viewers in the celebration of video,  by taking us back to the past and allowing us to experience the fuzzy memory of what marked the beginning of the world’s first practical videotape recorder.

Read more here.

Image source: The Verge

Shazam fashion

Shazam is multi-tasking and targeting fashion lovers! Just when you thought music finding excellence cannot get any better, the mastermind of music discovery is expanding, and now providing us with a fashion finding tool. The awesome app will help us to identify clothes in seconds…pure genius if you ask me!

Shazam are partnering up with TV shows to answer our prayers by allowing us to scan details of the outfits we love on TV simply by tagging the name of the TV show, and bam!….gateway to fashion heaven. If that isn’t enough, Shazam will also be directing us straight to the online source so all we have to do is click purchase

Really, it’s an all-round win-win situation for everyone. Shazam get bigger and better, another platform for fashion PR professionals to connect with, and we all benefit as a fashionable society!

Image source: Whats Haute

 Facebook video ads

We all know Facebook has a track record of introducing changes that the majority of us do not approve of, but I think this change may just take the crown. This summer Facebook have pitched the introduction of auto play video ads… now isn’t that something for users to look forward to!

One good thing to come out of this that its users will be glad to hear is that they will not be exposed to more than 3 ads per day.  Indeed, this is a great business venture for the social networking phenomena, and a great platform for advertisers, however, I’m not sure its social users will feel the same.

Read more here.

Hi readers! I’m Nazia, an intern at Edelman Middle East, and I’m giving blogging on Arabian Bytes a try for the first time this week with the return of The Week That Was! This week, we’re looking at brain games and brain waves, Facebook is in real life, and Twitter for business, so without further ado, we start with…

Twitter Tips for Business Success!

With Social Media becoming an increasingly integral part of  business these days, Twitter has re-launched Twitter for Business , an online resource where business ventures can get a better understanding of how to effectively incorporate Twitter efficiently into their business Strategies.

Twitter for Business includes online lessons designed to help businesses  master the art of social media and leverage the site to its full potential site.  Brand success stories include  Porsche who combine promoted trends with promoted tweets, and Hubspot who use promoted accounts to build their follower base of business-to-business marketers.

Read more here.

Obama’s Brain Game

The Obama government has announced that they are investing in the  BRAIN initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies). The initiative  is an intrepid plan to develop tools that can better map the human brain, helping scientists’  to understand how it works and how it can be healed when damaged. It is hoped that the research will also pave the way for treatments such as Alzheimer’s and epilepsy.

According to President Obama, “The most powerful computer in the world isn’t nearly as intuitive as the one we’re born with”.

Read more here.

No More Pesky Passwords

With numerous accounts to manage online, there is always the possibility of forgetting which password goes with what, but thanks to the researchers at the UC Berkeley School of Information, it many not be necessary to rattle our brains anymore.

By measuring brainwaves with intricate biosensor technology, researchers are able to replace passwords with “passthoughts” for computer validation. All you need is a $100 headset that wirelessly connects to a computer via Bluetooth whilst the device’s sensor rests against the user’s forehead, providing an electroencephalogram (EEG) signal from the brain. Whilst still in the test phase, simple actions like focusing on breathing or on a thought for ten seconds resulted in successful authentication.

Brainwaves are also unique to each individual, so even if someone knew your passthought, their emitted EEG signals would be different!

Read more here.

 Facebook Lives 

Can’t get enough of Facebook? Well now you never have to be without following Facebook’s recent unveiling of  ‘Home’;  a new smartphone software which claims it “isn’t a phone or operating system,” but is “more than just an app” and will deliver a “completely new [smartphone] experience.”

The software is essentially a Facebook-ified version of Google’s Android operating system, modified by Facebook engineers to place the social network at its core. ‘Home’ will be downloadable on a handful of smartphones in the coming few days, taking over the basic functions of  a phone by ultimately transforming  the device into Facebook to create a Facebook environment for our lives.

So how will it work?

A flow of updates from your News Feed will be the first thing seen when you turn on your device. The “cover feed,” a slideshow of friends’ photos and status updates, will also take over the phone’s primary screen. Home will also feature “chat heads”, which essentially brings together texting and messaging, replacing names with Facebook photos and allowing users message within any application.

Read more here.

 Instagram &   Facebook – One Year On

It’s been a year since Facebook acquired the small but trendy smartphone app, Instagram, for a massive $1billion!

On the day of the deal, Instagram’s CEO Kevin Systrom stated on their blog that Instagram would remain essentially the same; “The Instagram app will still be the same one you know and love. You’ll still have all the same people you follow and that follow you.You’ll still be able to share to other social networks. And you’ll still have all the other features that make the app so fun and unique.”

So what does the relationship look like one year on?

From  Facebook’s offices, Instagram continues to bring out innovative features  such as  feed and profiles for the web, photo maps, and a tool called Lux for balancing exposure and adjusting brightness. It has also offered new filters like Mayfair, Willow and Sierra, and in addition now also  provides translations for 25 languages. Most significantly, its follower  base quadrupled to more than 100 million monthly active users.

For now neither Facebook  nor Instagram have really influenced each other’s offerings, and so far, there seems to be no indication that they will. The day the will come of course when Facebook will want to monetize its massive investment; when this day will be and what this will entail, time will only tell. Let’s just say that the new web version of Instagram leaves plenty of room for ads.

Read more here.

2012 was a pivotal year for online video. The numbers? Well, in 2012: 56% of consumer web traffic was video, YouTube users watched more than 36-billion hours of video and online video was the fastest growing ad format (+55%). Put simply, 2012 was the year of Gangnam Style.

What about the regional statistics? There are 167 million online video views a day in the Arab region; putting the region in the number two spot in the world (behind the U.S). A whopping 90 million of those daily video views come from KSA, a region where movie theaters are banned and YouTube is affectionately regaled as “Saudi Cinema”.

Jump to January 2013, and Twitter launches Vine. Dubbed ‘the Instagram of video’, Vine is a free video recording application for iPhone/iOS that allows users to record and share video amongst an active and growing in-app community. Recordings are limited to 6.0 seconds with the camera only recording while the screen is being tapped, giving gif-like effects with the addition of an audio file.

Vine can be used in various ways, from capturing timely events, creating mesmerizing video art to simply showboating clips of your cat in a bow tie. Gimmicks, memes and looping cat videos aside, people and corporations alike are discovering new and valuable applications for the 6-second video service – just ask “deadline-Jedi” Dawn Siff who’s plucky ‘Vine resume’ landed her a job at the Economist on Tuesday.

How are brands using Vine?

In a space that is dramatically shifting to visual, video will undoubtedly play an increasingly important role in the way brands engage and drive messaging on social. As with any new social network, brands are very much in a stage of experimentation as to what content works and what doesn’t.

Urban Outfitters

An edgy high-street retailer focusing on trendy and cutting edge fashion, Urban Outfitters (UO) is one of the most enthusiastic early adopters of Vine – 17,494 followers at the time of writing. If my illuminating Casio wristwatch from Urban Outfitters has taught me anything, it pays to be both cool and clever. Combining product demonstrations with a witty and playful context (see Girls Gone Mild embed – left), UO projects a cool corporate culture while creating engaging content that sells shirts.

However, it’s not all catwalk and product shots. Curating content around popular and trending in-app hashtags, UO owes much of the accounts success and community growth to the copious amounts of humor and dog related videos that both humanize the brand and spotlight employees – I mean, who wouldn’t buy clothes from a brand that high-fives bulldogs?

General Electric

Click the image to stop the animationSo, your brand or client doesn’t high-five bulldogs? Tough break, but don’t lose all hope just yet. General Electric, the 6th-largest firm in the US (by gross revenue), is probably amongst the bottom of the list of brands you most expect to be flexing their creative muscles on the platform.

Publishing clever and interactive stop-motion content around their popular Twitter hashtags, GE creatively engages with the Vine and Twitter community (see #IWantToInvent embed – left). GE also frequents a series of surprisingly cool garage-science How-To’s that appeal to pockets of users otherwise disengaged from the organizations day-to-day operations.

For brands and marketers, Vine presents an additional channel to contribute to the conversation without the expenses associated with traditional videography. Video length restrictions allow Vine videos to capture even the smallest of attention spans and forces brands to adopt a more clever and direct approach to messaging and storytelling.

As consumers, Vine can change our perception of brands and can shift the way we absorb information. Vine has the potential to alter the format in which we ingest news and in particular, breaking news; Turkish journalist @TulinDaloglu highlighted this when she successfully used Vine to document the aftermath of a U.S embassy bombing. Lest we forget, there’s always hours to be wasted looping Vinecats.

So, is Vine here to stay?

Short answer: yes.

With Vine topping the iOS free app charts in the U.S, the app’s imminent Android rollout and deeper integration with the Twitter platform, I have no qualms hailing Vine as the “next big thing” in short-form video content. As brands continue to express themselves creatively and experiment with content types, ask yourself, could my brand benefit from an early foothold on the platform?